What Is Prohibition to a Crime Lord?
by en-shaedn
Summary: 1920's Prohibition/Gangster AU - Bruce is a detective, Tony's a crime lord, and Hydra is a problem for them both.


Gunshots rang through a bustling Chicago afternoon; the crowds on the street reacted much as any crowd would. They scattered, ran, and panicked. The police were called in; by the time James Barnes and Bruce Banner arrived on the scene, there was nothing to go on. A blood stain, a hat left on the ground. Bruce scowled and pulled out a cigar. It took him a few times to light the thing; his hands were shaking.

"This is the third this week." James "Bucky" Buchanan made a statement just to make some noise. His partner was a volatile man, and distractions were always a good thing to have handy.

"Anything you see different on this one?" This was the fifth potential crime scene the partners had been sent to in a month. Nothing remained - no witnesses, no body, no weapon. Nothing.

"Nothing. Think it's the Starks?" The Starks were the biggest branch of the Crime Syndicates here in Chicago. If it was a Stark ordering these hits, the criminal would never see a trial; Howard Stark owned too many of the judges on the circuit.

"Wasn't no Stark." The voice belonged to a man walking out of a nearby building, his hat tilted at a jaunty angle and his stride long. "Sam Wilson." He put his hand forward confidently, and Bucky shook it. Bruce did the same, his eyes lighting with interest behind his cigar.

"You saw something?"

Sam tilted his head toward Bruce and grinned. "I did. No Stark hired this guy. I know all the hitters in the Family, and this guy is new." Bruce frowned. Beggars couldn't be choosers, to be sure, but he'd had enough of the slimy taste of Chicago's underbelly to not want to work with yet another hitter or insider. This man's eyes were far too sharp for his easy-going persona. His cop instincts were quietly marking him as a threat. "I can get you a meeting with Anthony Stark." Wilson lost the cheerful animation and spoke with crisp authority.

Bruce took a puff on his cigar. This guy wasn't a hitter; he had access to the son of the head honcho. He was dangerous. "I don't know you." The question was implied.

"I'm not a part of the Family. I know a guy." Bruce looked at his partner, who nodded. They were going then.

"When do you want to have a meeting?" Sam grinned.

They were going to meet the son of the most notorious mob boss in America, and they had…twenty minutes notice. "You're being remarkably helpful, Mr. Wilson. Why is that?"

"Mr. Stark can explain." And that was that, until the car pulled into a huge building. From what Bruce recalled, Anthony Stark had designed it himself.

At the door, they were greeted by a butler. When he offered to take their coats and hats, only Sam took him up on it. "Thanks Jarvis!" The butler whisked himself away efficiently, in the manner of butlers everywhere.

The sitting room was much less opulent than Bruce would have thought; he turned to his partner to ask his opinion when he noticed something odd. Bucky wasn't looking around. And he hadn't asked any subtle, probing questions as was his norm in the car. Bruce frowned. Before the thought in his mind could come to fruition, the door opened, and in walked Anthony Edward Stark.

And…Steve Rogers? The war hero? The one the media called "Captain America" for his patriotism, courage, and sheer determination in the trenched of the Great War? Well then. This was different.

"You must be Bruce Banner. Pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. I've heard a lot about you." And the dots clicked with Stark's exuberant greeting. Bruce turned to his partner.

"You work for him?" The disbelief was tamped down, and his voice came out flat and dangerous. Corruption in the police force was normal, expected. His partner being a part of it was not.

"Of course Bucky doesn't work for Stark." Rogers spoke before Bucky could say anything to his partner's accusation.

"Not for lack of trying, really, he's too smart to be a cop." Stark sounded like he was rehearsing an old argument as he poured himself some scotch. No one took him up on his gesticulated offer to share; it was three in the afternoon, and it was probably illegal. Prohibition meant nothing to most people, but taking booze from a gangster in the middle of the day was pushing it.

Steve watched Stark drink with a scowl on his well-documented face. Bruce wondered if he was Protestant; that, or he could just resent the role that alcohol had played in the rise to power of the crime families, including Stark's.

"Steve's been my friend since we grew up together. I try to know what stupid thing he's gotten involved in so I can do damage control," Bucky said. He wasn't intimidated by his partner's stare. Rogers rolled his eyes at his friend and looked directly at Bruce.

"We have a problem, Mr. Banner. The Starks are the Family here in Chicago, but something's going on." He took a deep breath and looked at the Stark son in the room. Stark made a get on with it gesture with his glass; he was already getting a refill. "This is information you probably shouldn't share outside this room. Howard and Maria Stark died two days ago in a shoot out in a restaurant in New York. The Family has already been made aware, but there are…some problems."

"He means to say there's someone killing people in my town, and they aren't mine. I can't find them." Stark laughed bitterly. "I'm going to be deposed for the lack of a map."

"What do you mean, Stark?" Bruce held his alarm in check. What the man was describing with two syllable words was-

"A street war." Sam spoke from his place on the couch, comfortably sprawled across two cushions. Steve reached over from his chair and smacked his leg; Sam grinned at him and continued, position unchanging. "We have people out looking for this guy, but the only information we have is from two of our people near the docks. That's a name, Hydra. We don't know where they are or who's involved. All we know is that its big. We don't know how big."

Stark continued. "The idea we had-" Steve flicked a piece of paper into his glass from across the room. "Okay, _Steve _had, was to find out if the police had a hint. Bucky can't access any important records, he's a junior detective. You, on the other hand…"

"I have access. You want me to go into secure files and find you classified information." Bruce scowled.

"If you don't, a street war is on its way. My people are damned good, but we can't hit what we can't find. And we aren't committing murders in broad daylight. Lesser of two evils here, detective. And I'll owe you a favor." The favor of the Head of the Family in Chicago wasn't something to casually throw away; it was for a good cause. And Bucky was giving him a Look.

"Fine. Hydra, right?" Tony - as he insisted on being called - refused to let them go without an escort. So they walked out of the skyscraper with a man walking easily beside them and a red haired woman tucking her arm daintily under Bucky's. The alarm in Bucky's eyes made Bruce very glad she had attached herself to him.

Natalie and Clint made good company on the ride to the precinct, no matter how alarming and evocative of danger they might be. Clint was relaxed and easy to speak with, and Natalie possessed flawless social grace. When she fluidly tucked herself into the (opulent) car, he pegged her as well trained. His mind rebelled against the idea a woman was trained in combat, but his instincts were going wild.

By the end of the ride, he was glad to get out of the car. They were at the precinct. Stark was apparently of the mind that there was no time like the present. There weren't too many people here to question him; the night shift wasn't going to give a day detective a hard time about going through the files.

Bruce didn't find anything that day. Natalie and Clint smiled and left, but the two detectives knew they were around; people like that don't just leave.

The next day, and the next week, and the next set of files, left Bruce with nothing. The time lost was taking its toll. Every day brought them closer to a street war; three more people were dead. His wife, Betty, informed him that his foul mood was messing up her experiments; how his bad mood would affect some pea plants, he didn't know. Besides, it wasn't like she was doing something groundbreaking; a monk had done this before, right? Then he was subjected to a crisp, well-informed lecture as to why, exactly, her work was going to revolutionize the world of genetics, and yes, Mendel had done it, but she was doing this differently and...it was a good thing he loved science.

Finally, more than a week after being approached, he found what Tony was looking for.

He walked out of the station with ashes in his mouth. Bucky was waiting for him at the car. "What's wrong?" Bruce shook his head.

"We need to get to Tony." When they arrived, Sam let them in; Jarvis was nowhere to be seen. They were led to the same sitting room as before, where there were two men sitting side by side on the couch. One was tall and blond and muscular; the other was lean and dark and hungry. Tony was pacing the room like a trapped tiger, angry and growing desperate. Steve Rogers stood against the wall, a blond shadow, watching the two detectives approach.

Natalie and Clint appeared in the doorway behind Bruce and Bucky; Bucky flinched, and Bruce didn't react at all. He was too intent on Tony's face. When the crime lord took in the detectives expression, he closed his eyes in dismay.

"So they're that high, then? We were hoping we were wrong." Bruce nodded.

"As far as I can tell, the Secretary of State and a few generals are the most highly ranked members, but the middle level guys can cause a lot of trouble for us." Us. He already felt more comfortable here than he had in the station. The murderers here were very honest about their goals. An overheard conversation between his captain and a lackey – involving name dropping and an operation going on in the Pacific somewhere – had destroyed more than fifteen years of loyalty to an institution.

The two men on the couch shifted. "I do not believe the Secretary will be a problem, should we find a need to reach that high." Bruce took a closer look. That was the Speaker of the House, sitting on the furniture of a criminal. He closed his eyes. Loki Laufeyson was a dangerous man, by all accounts. His brother was, too; Thor Odinson was protective and very, very smart, no matter how his looks made others think. The government was so damned corrupt; no wonder people like Hydra could sink themselves into the roots.

"He won't be taken down by words alone, Loki. He's killed a lot of people." The rage in Steve's voice answered one of Bruce's questions about this whole disaster. He wondered who Hydra had killed to make him so angry.

"He won't be working with words alone." Thor's voice was deep and confident. They made a dangerous pair.

"Thank you for your time, Bruce. I know you aren't a fan of the whole gangster thing, but you got us some solid information we needed. You were one of the only guys on the force we knew wasn't dirty." Tony grinned. "But hey, if you wanna go after Hydra with us, you're welcome. I've heard you're pretty good in a brawl." Before he could begin extolling the virtues of criminality, or at least why Bruce should work with them, a blonde woman walked into the room with a packet of papers. She crossed the room toward Tony with a predator's intent, and he looked dismayed. She eyed the drink in his hand disapprovingly; he set it on the table, guilty.

She whisked him over to a table with a chair next to it and set him to signing papers; Bruce eyed her with a grin. Someone was in charge here, and it wasn't the big bad crime boss.

Bruce looked at the criminal he had come to enjoy despite the criminal part, his partner who was obviously involved in this, the politician and his brother, the war hero looking for revenge, and the two scary silent strong arms behind him. His eyes finally met Sam Wilson's, and the man grinned.

"Guy, the food is amazing. Worth it just for that."

Bruce shrugged. The force was obviously irretrievably corrupt, and if there was good booze…well, Bruce had never liked Prohibition anyway.


End file.
